Data = Art

December 23, 2005 1:24 PM

distellamap is a series of graphical representations of the code and data in Atari 2600 game cartridges, created using the Processing programming language. The results are rather pretty. Also by the same author: mario soup, a representation of the sprites in Super Mario Brothers. (via artificial.dk)
posted by whir (17 comments total)

Ah, sweet, sweet 6502. Sniff. *nostalgia*
posted by Wolfdog at 1:39 PM on December 23, 2005

Awesome.
posted by killdevil at 2:10 PM on December 23, 2005

Fan-fucking-tastic. Thanks!

Note: The processing community including and especially Ben and Casey are totally fucking rad so everyone should try it. They answer code questions like nearly overnight. Check out the community site.
posted by zpousman at 2:24 PM on December 23, 2005

This is good.
posted by Herr Fahrstuhl at 2:34 PM on December 23, 2005

Oh, and the via link (artificial.dk) is also worth checking out, if only for the link to Cory Arcangel's Super Mario Clouds project.
posted by Herr Fahrstuhl at 2:56 PM on December 23, 2005

Along those lines, I remember ripping graphics from games on the Atari ST by breaking w/ the debugger and quckly scanning through memory. Since the debugger's displayed 16 bytes across, it was easy to see graphics because their hex values would look vaguely like their screen representations.

Good times.
posted by jewzilla at 3:14 PM on December 23, 2005

Cool. And a nice way to visualize the disassembled code, too.
posted by hattifattener at 3:49 PM on December 23, 2005

echo $above
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 4:35 PM on December 23, 2005

Why is processing a seperate language and not just an API you can call from java?
posted by delmoi at 5:09 PM on December 23, 2005

delmoi: the faq doesn't say, but they've got a stand-alone IDE that actually runs the apps, so it's a bona-fide environment.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 5:29 PM on December 23, 2005

More than strongly reminiscent of DNA sequences. Hmmmm....
posted by longsleeves at 5:47 PM on December 23, 2005

Extremely neat.
posted by cortex at 6:13 PM on December 23, 2005

I presented another way to appreciate the code for COMBAT. Maybe not as pretty, but much more informative about how the program works :-)
posted by localroger at 6:31 PM on December 23, 2005

Oh, and on later reflection: When doing this kind of analysis (which I do on my own code all the time, on paper with pens) you don't draw arrows to subroutine calls (JSR's). That's just a gratuitous way of increasing the number of arrows in the graphs. And I use arrowheads to indicate jump direction.
posted by localroger at 8:24 PM on December 23, 2005

Man, I haven't seen 6502 assembly language in almost twenty years!
posted by Slothrup at 8:51 PM on December 23, 2005

Call me a geek, but I'd love to get a poster of one of those printouts.
posted by milnak at 10:42 PM on December 23, 2005

See also this ask.mefi question.
posted by hooray at 10:48 AM on December 25, 2005